To Benjamin Franklin

Last Evening I recieved your Excellency's Letter of the 16th. of this month, accompanied
with a Letter from the President of Congress containing the Commissions You mention.2

You desire to know what Steps have already been taken in this business.3 There has been no Step taken by me, in pursuance of my former Commission, until my
late Journey to Paris at the Invitation of the Comte de Vergennes, who communicated
to me certain Articles, proposed by the mediating Courts, and desired me to make such
Observations upon them, as should occur to me. Accordingly I wrote a Number of Letters
to his Excellency of the following Dates, July 13th. inclosing an answer to the Articles,
16th. 18th. 19th. 21st.4 I would readily send You Copies of the Articles and of those Letters, but there are
matters in them, which had better not be trusted to go so long a Journey, especially
as there is no Necessity for it.

The Comte de Vergennes will readily give You Copies of the Articles and of my Letters,
which will prevent all risque.

I am very apprehensive that our new Commission will be as useless as my old one. Congress
might very safely I believe permit Us all to go home, if We find no other business5, and stay there some Years: at least until every British Soldier in the United States
is killed or captivated. Till then Britain will never think of Peace, but for the
purposes of Chicanery.

I see in the Papers, that the British Ambassador at Petersbourg has recieved an Answer
from his Court to the Articles.6 What this Answer is, We may conjecture from the King's Speech. Yet the Empress of
Russia has made an Insinuation to their high Mightinesses, which deserves Attention.
Perhaps You may have seen it: but lest You should not, I will add a Translation of
it, which I sent to Congress in the time of it, not having the original at hand.7

“The Affection of the Empress to the Interests of the Republick of the United Provinces,
and her desire to see re established, by a prompt Reconciliation, a Peace and good
Harmony between the two maritime Powers, have been sufficiently manifested by the
Step which she had taken, in offering them her seperate Mediation.

“If She has not had the desired Success, her Imperial Majesty has only been for that
Reason the more attentive to search out means capable of conducting her to it. One
such mean offers itself in the combined Mediation of the two Imperial Courts, under
the Auspices of which it is to be treated at Vienna (il doit être traité a Vienne)
of a general Pacification of the Courts actually at War. It is only necessary for the Republick to regulate itself in the
same manner. Her Imperial Majesty, by an effect of her friendship for it, imposing
upon herself the Task of bringing her Co-mediator into an Agreement, to share with
her the Cares and the good Offices, which She has displayed in its favor As soon as
it shall please their high Mightinesses to make known their Intentions in this regard
to Mr. the Prince de Gallitzin, the Envoy of the Empress at the Hague, charged to
make to them the same Insinuation: this last will write of it immediately to the Minister
of her Imperial Majesty at Vienna, who will not fail to take with that Court the Arrangements
which are prescribed to him, to the end to proceed in this affair by the same formalities,
which We have made use of with the other Powers. Her Imperial Majesty flatters herself,
that the Republick will recieve this Overture, as a fresh proof of her Benevolence,
and of the Attention which She preserves, to cultivate the Ties of that friendship
and of that Alliance which subsists between them.”

I must beg the favour of your Excellency to communicate to me whatever You may learn,
which has any Connection with this Negotiation, particularly the French, Spanish and
British Answers to the Articles, as soon as You can obtain them. In my Situation,
it is not likely I shall obtain any Information of Consequence, but from the French
Court. Whatever may come to my Knowledge, I will communicate to You without delay.

If Britain persists in her two Preliminaries, as I presume She does, what will be
the Consequence? Will the two Imperial Courts permit this great plan, of a Congress
at Vienna, which is public and made the common talk of Europe, to become another sublime
Bubble, like the armed Neutrality? In what a light will these mediating Courts appear,
after having listened to a Proposition of England, so far as to make Propositions
themselves, and to refer to them in many public Acts, if Britain refuses to agree
to them? and insists upon such Preliminaries as are at least an Insult to France and
America, and a kind of Contempt to the common Sense of all Europe.

Upon my word I am weary of such round about and endless Negotiations, as that of the
armed Neutrality and this of the Congress at Vienna. I think the Dutch have at last
discovered the only effectual Method of Negotiation, that is by fighting the British
Fleets, until every Ship is obliged to answer the Signal for renewing the Battle by
the signal of distress. There is no Room for British Chicanery in this. If I ever
did any good since I was born, it was in stirring up the pure Minds of the Dutchmen,
and setting the old Batavian Spirit in motion, after having slept so long. Our dear
Country will go fast to sleep, in full Assurance of having News of Peace by Winter,
if not by the first Vessel. Allass! what a disappointment they will meet.8 I believe I had better go home and wake up our Countrymen out of their Reveries about
Peace. Congress have done very well to join others in the Commission for Peace.9 My Talent, if I have one lies in making War. The Grand Segnior will finish the Proces
des trois Rois sooner than the Congress at Vienna will make Peace, unless10 the two Imperial Courts act with Dignity and Consistency upon the occasion, and acknowledge
American Independency at once, upon Britain's insisting on her two insolent Preliminaries.

I have the honor to be, Sir, Your most obedient and most humble Servant

1. This is the last letter JA wrote until 4 October. During the intervening 39 days he suffered from a “nervous
fever of a very malignant kind, and so violent as to deprive me of almost all sensibility
for four or five days.” He recovered only through the “wondrous Virtue” of the “all-powerful”
Peruvian bark and the ministrations of his faithful secretary John Thaxter and Dr.
Nicolaas George Oosterdijk of the University of Leyden's medical faculty (to the president
of Congress, 15 Oct., Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev., 4:776–779; to C. W. F. Dumas, 18 Oct., LbC, Adams Papers). JA wrote to Benjamin Franklin on 4 Oct. that it was “the first Time that I have taken a Pen in hand to write to any body,
having been confined and reduced too low to do any kind of business” (Franklin, Papers, 35:556–558). Not until mid-Nov. did the volume of JA's correspondence approach its pre• { 470 } vious levels; on 14 Dec. he informed Francis Dana that he was recovering but remained “weak and lame” (MHi: Dana Family Papers; JA, Works, 7:493–495).

It cannot be said definitively what illness JA suffered from, for any diagnosis done more than two hundred years after the fact
must in the end rest largely on speculation. Many of the medical terms current in
the eighteenth century are either no longer used or have meanings different from those
in JA's day. Dr. Oosterdijk's notes and testimony of his examination are unavailable and
JA's own descriptions, those of a layman, lack precision.

The inherent difficulty of diagnosing JA's illness has not deterred some biographers from making the attempt. Peter Shaw,
in the Character of John Adams (Chapel Hill, 1976, p. 150–152), and James H. Hutson, in John Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution (Lexington, Ky., 1980, p. 97–98), see JA as mentally unstable, even paranoid, and conclude that his illness was psychosomatic.
John Ferling, in John Adams, A Life (Knoxville, 1992, p. 237–238), wrote that JA contracted malaria, a view David McCullough shared in his John Adams (N.Y., 2001, p. 264–266). But Ferling, in an article entitled “John Adams' Health
Reconsidered” that he co-authored with Lewis E. Braverman (WMQ, 3d ser., 55:83–104 [Jan. 1998]), declared that JA was likely a victim of Graves' disease, so that his “behavior was not, as many have
thought, the result of problems in his head or his heart, but in his thyroid.”

The editors believe JA's illness was physical and most likely indigenous to the Netherlands. JA wrote to Ferdinand Grand on 12 Oct. (LbC, Adams Papers) that he was the victim of “an Amsterdam Fever, which they call an Introduction to
the Freedom of the City,” implying that it was normal for one foreign to Amsterdam
to fall ill in the course of acclimating himself to the locale. Indeed, on 5 Oct. Benjamin Franklin wrote: “I hope this Seasoning will be the means of securing your
future Health, by accommodating your Constitution to the Air of that Country” (Adams Papers; Franklin, Papers, 35:565–567). And JA later wrote that it was “the destiny of every stranger who goes into Holland to encounter
either an intermittent or bilious fever within the two first years” (JA, Corr. in the Boston Patriot, p. 533).

A diagnosis of malaria is attractive because it was endemic to the Netherlands, particularly
in North Holland. Physicians would have been familiar with the symptoms and with the
prescribed treatment: Peruvian bark or quinine. Moreover, from their reported symptoms
it is likely that JA's son CA, his servant Joseph Stephens, and his secretary John Thaxter all suffered from malaria.

But JA's descriptions of his illness are at variance with the classic symptoms of malaria.
Malaria is a periodic fever, that is, the victim suffers severe chills and then a
fever that reaches a peak and then subsides, only to return two or three days later.
In the intervals between the fever, the patient may appear and feel in good health.
JA, however, nowhere describes his fever as periodic or “tertian,” as he does CA's in the spring of 1781 (Adams Family Correspondance, 4:108). Instead, he states that he suffered a high fever of at least five days' duration
and was unable to work for well over a month.

JA's repeated statements that he suffered from a “nervous fever” present another possibility.
The term “nervous fever” is another name for typhus in medical reference books of
the time (Quincy's Lexicon Physico-Medicum, 8th edn., N.Y., 1802; Robert Hooper, A Compendious Medical Dictionary, Boston, 1801; The Philadelphia Medical Dictionary, Phila., 1808). Typhus causes a rapidly rising fever that peaks at 102 to 105 degrees
during the first two or three days and is then sustained for another five. In the
course of the fever the patient experiences delirium and, on or about the fifth day,
a dark red rash of elevated spots appears. Thereafter the fever falls rapidly, assuming
that the outcome is favorable (Cambridge World History of Human Disease, ed. Kenneth F. Kiple, N.Y., 1993, p. 1080–1081). The use of Peruvian bark would
have reflected contemporary medical practice for typhus, because while quinine was
used for malarial fevers, it was used also “for most patients who had been debilitated
by continued fevers” (J. Worth Estes, Dictionary of Protopharmacology, Therapeutic Practices, 1700–1850, Canton, Mass., 1990, p. 48). These are approximately the symptoms and the treatment
JA described in his letters, particularly those of 9 Oct. to his wife (Adams Family Correspondance, 4:224), and 15 Oct. to the president of Congress (Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev., 4:776–779).

A diagnosis of typhus is intriguing, but no less speculative than others that have
been proposed. Ultimately all that can be said is that JA had a serious, debilitating illness in 1781 that severely curtailed his activities
for months. Its precise nature is unknown.

3. At this point in the Letterbook is the following canceled passage: “Upon my first
arrival at Paris with a Commission to join in Conference for Peace, I presented a
Copy of it to the Comte de Vergennes, and from that Time no one step whatever has
been taken by me.” For JA's initial exchange with Vergennes over the original peace commission, see JA, Diary and Autobiography, 4:243–245, 250–254; and vol. 8:320–321, 328, 337, 362–363, 367.

5. At this point in the Letterbook is the canceled passage “but makin Peace.”

6. See JA's first letter of 6 Aug. to the president of Congress, calendared above.

7. JA included the following translation in his second letter of 16 Aug. to the president of Congress, calendared above. See that letter for JA's comments; for the source of the translation and the document itself, see C. W.
F. Dumas' letter of 3 July, and note 1, above.

8. In the Letterbook JA originally ended the letter at this point, but then canceled his closing, inserted
the final sentence of this paragraph, and added a new closing. After further reflection,
he wrote the three sentences beginning “I believe” below the new closing and marked
it for insertion at this point.

9. In the Letterbook this sentence ends “who have Some faculties for it.”

10. At this point in the Letterbook is the canceled passage “of which I have no hope.”